growth of this dependency which more than all the victories of her arms
was lifting her to a new greatness among the nations. It was the trade
with it which had doubled English commerce in half-a-century. Of the
right of the mother country to monopolize this trade, to deal with this
great people as its own possession, no Englishman had a doubt. England,
it was held, had planted every colony. It was to England that the
Colonists owed not their blood only, but the free institutions under
which they had grown to greatness. English arms had rescued them from
the Indians, and broken the iron barrier with which France was holding
them back from the West. In the war which was drawing to a close England
had poured out her blood and gold without stint in her children's cause.
Of the debt which was mounting to a height unknown before no small part
was due to her struggle on behalf of America. And with this sense of
obligation mingled a sense of ingratitude. It was generally held that
the wealthy Colonists should do something to lighten the load of this
debt from the shoulders of the mother country. But it was known that all
proposals for American taxation would be bitterly resisted. The monopoly
of American trade was looked on as a part of an Englishman's birthright.
Yet the Colonists not only murmured at this monopoly but evaded it in
great part by a wide system of smuggling. And behind all these
grievances lay an uneasy sense of dread at the democratic form which the
government and society of the colonies had taken. The governors sent
from England wrote back words of honest surprise and terror at the
"levelling principles" of the men about them. To statesmen at home the
temper of the colonial legislatures, their protests, their bickerings
with the governors and with the Board of Trade, the constant refusal of
supplies when their remonstrances were set aside, seemed all but
republican.

[Sidenote: George the Third.]

To check this republican spirit, to crush all dreams of severance, and
to strengthen the unity of the British Empire by drawing closer the
fiscal and administrative bonds which linked the colonies to the mother
country, was one of the chief aims with which George the Third mounted
the throne on the death of his grandfather George the Second, in 1760.
But it was far from being his only aim. For the first and last time
since the accession of the House of Hanover England saw a king who was
resolved to play a part in